Ten people were killed and ten wounded in separate attacks in Iraq on Friday, police said.

Three soldiers and an officer were killed when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in the town of Shora, south of the city of the northern city of Mosul, about 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a police source in Mosul told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, a policeman was killed when gunmen using silenced weapons opened fire on a police checkpoint in the city of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, the source said.

Elsewhere, two soldiers were killed and four wounded when gunmen in a car using silenced weapons shot their checkpoint in al- Rashad area, some 50 km south of the city of Kirkuk, which itself is about 250 km north of Baghdad, a local police source anonymously told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces clashed with suspected al- Qaida militants during an operation at a village near the city of Shirqat, some 110 km north of Salahudin provincial capital of Tikrit, killing two gunmen, one of them believed to be one of al- Qaida leaders in the province, a provincial police source said.

Salahudin province, located in northern central Iraq, is a mainly Sunni province. Its capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of the former president Saddam Hussien.

Separately, Iraqi security forces killed Hamid al-Samarrai, a suspected senior leader of al-Qaida network in Iraq and captured four armed men and seized a cache of weapons and ammunition during another operation at the rural area in north of Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer told Xinhua.

In addition, six people were wounded in separate bombings and shootings across Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial police source said.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in five years, raising fears that the latest bloodshed is bringing the country back to a full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

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